Strikes were frequently accompanied by violence during the 1980s in
South Africa. Strikers were regularly beaten, arrested and shot by the
police. Strike breakers were intimidated, beaten and sometimes murdered
by striking workers. Labour analysts ascribed the high levels of worker
violence to the conditions under which trade unions organised and
engaged in collective-bargaining during the apartheid era--in
particular, the failure to fully institutionalise industrial conflict,
and, more broadly, the absence of political rights which imbued
industrial action with a strongly political dimension (Von Holdt 1989
and 2003, Webster and Simpson 1990). The implication was that with the
political incorporation of workers into a post-apartheid democracy, and
with the full institutionalisation of industrial conflict in new
post-apartheid labour legislation, strike violence and the high levels
of mass militancy which sustained it, would decline.

This has not happened. Strikes have increasingly been accompanied
by heavy-handed police action--beatings, shooting with rubber bullets,
arrests --while intimidation, assaults and murders of strike breakers
have been a persistent feature of many large-scale strikes. This article
seeks to explain why violence remains so much a part of industrial
action, and what this tells us about the post-apartheid social order. It
argues that several factors continue to undermine the
institutionalisation of industrial relations and that, as in the 1980s,
these factors range from those that are specific to the field of
industrial relations itself to those that arise from the nature of the
broader political, economic and social transition. These broader factors
dispose workers to draw on the repertoires of collective violence that
have been established as a tradition of conflict and struggle in South
Africa in order to strengthen their collective-bargaining position
vis-a-vis employers.

This article begins by summarising a case study of strike violence
in a steelworks during the apartheid period, and argues that political
struggle played a considerably more significant role in undermining the
institutionalisation of industrial relations than previous analysis had
suggested. It then turns to two strikes in the public service, one in
1992 and the second in 2007. The first of these took place at a time
when public service workers had no institutional or trade union rights
and when, beyond the industrial relations field, society was marked by
the heightened instability and extreme violence of the period of
negotiated transition following the unbanning of the liberation
movements. The strike was marked by extremely high levels of brutal
violence. The 2007 strike, in contrast, took place at a time when public
service workers had full trade union and collective bargaining rights,
and when a constitutional democracy had been in place for more than a
decade. Nonetheless, despite conditions that appeared propitious to the
institutionalisation of industrial conflict, the strike was
characterised by considerable violent intimidation of non-strikers.

The question is why this should be so. Analysis of interviews with
workers suggests two reasons: firstly, steps taken by the employer acted
to undermine what workers understood to be their collective-bargaining
rights, reducing the strike to a naked power struggle; and, secondly,
and more importantly, workers articulate a somewhat inchoate but
nonetheless strong sense of grievance about their location in
post-apartheid society which legitimates recourse to familiar tactics of
struggle, including repertoires of collective violence. Two conclusions
can be drawn from this. Firstly, a common thread that runs through the
apartheid and post-apartheid period is that the degree of
institutionalisation of industrial relations is dependent on broader
political and social factors beyond the field of industrial relations
itself. Secondly, the question of the industrial and social order in
post-apartheid South Africa is not a settled matter: the authority of
the state and of the law has a limited reach, and social hierarchy and
the balance of power between social forces that underpins it remains
contested. This explains the high levels of conflict and violence not
only in industrial relations, but in many spheres of South African
society.

The article concludes with the argument that the limits to
institutionalisation cannot be understood only with reference to the
dynamics within the field of industrial relations, but that
institutionalisation implies acceptance by all parties of the underlying
social order, of which industrial relations is simply one component.
Where the underlying social order is unsettled or contested,
institutionalisation is likely to remain partial and precarious.
Research into institutionalisation, then, has to go beyond the analysis
of formal institutions and procedures, and investigate the informal
networks and rationales that underlie this, and what these tell us about
the broader social order.

Strike violence under apartheid

Webster and Simpson argue that the institutionalisation of
industrial relations requires both industrial relations institutions
that enable the trade unions to exercise the power of collective action
according to mutually agreed procedures, as well as the broader
political incorporation that Geary (1985) termed the
'constitutionalisation of the working class' (Webster and
Simpson 1990). In South Africa under apartheid, neither of these
conditions existed. Although labour legislation introduced in 1981
established trade union and collective-bargaining rights for black
workers for the first time, these rights were deficient. In particular,
the right to picket--crucial for unions to exert the moral pressure of
the majority against non-strikers--was not only absent from the labour
legislation, but also effectively banned by political legislation. Nor
did the law give unions the right to strike, since legally striking
workers were not protected from dismissal. Politically, black workers
had no vote and no citizenship rights, like all other black South
Africans. Notwithstanding the new labour legislation, employers were
frequently hostile in the face of union activity, and political
repression undoubtedly exacerbated industrial conflict, with the
incidence of murder of non-strikers escalating after the State of
Emergency was imposed in 1986 (Von Holdt 1989, Webster and Simpson
1990).

An ethnographic case study of union organisation, conducted at
Highveld Steel after the apartheid period, provided greater insight into
the factors which undermined institutionalisation during the apartheid
period (Von Holdt 2003). Highveld Steel is a large steelworks employing
some 5,000 workers located 150 km east of Johannesburg in Mpumalanga. In
the 1980s it was the scene for a series of extremely militant strikes by
the metal workers union, NUMSA, marked by intense contestation between
management and workers as well as a violent conflict between different
factions of workers.

In order to understand what was taking place inside the steelworks,
it is necessary to have some information about what was happening
outside of the workplace, in the communities surrounding the factory. In
the early to mid-1980s the popular movement organised campaigns,
marches, boycotts and stay aways. During 1986 confrontation became more
intense as youths and activists targeted state property and black
'collaborators' for violent action. In response, the state
made use of the national state of emergency to detain activists, ban
organisations and launch frequent armed patrols through the township.
Formal organisational structures became inoperable, and the struggle
shifted to frequent clashes in the streets between armed police and
stone-throwing youths, attacks on black collaborators such as policemen
and town councillors, and attacks on government vehicles. Two off-duty
police officers were killed, and councillors' houses were petrol
bombed. The popular movement conceptualised its strategy as
'rendering apartheid unworkable or rendering ourselves
ungovernable' and 'establishing people's power'.
Although the security forces of the state were able to regain physical
control of the township, the machinery of apartheid administration and
coercion was broken, and rents boycotts bankrupted the local
administration (Von Holdt 2003:90-96).

The nature of this broader political struggle shaped trade unionism
in the workplace. The tactics of 'ungovernability', violent
confrontation and intimidation that characterised community struggles
were translated into wildcat strikes, symbolic confrontation and the
subversion of order and institutional procedures in the workplace,
generating a dynamic of disorder and violence. In part the prevalence of
wildcat strikes and the flouting of procedure arose from the fact that
the workers' rights established by labour law did not automatically
translate into rights on the shop floor; the new procedures and rights
remained highly unstable and fiercely contested throughout the 1980s;
and this contestation was charged with racial tension:

'We were in war with management ... Our members did not even
know whether they had rights or not, and the bosses were not happy about
the rights extended to our members. We had to fight for the recognition
of the rights that we already had, which were not recognized'. (Von
Holdt 2003:76-77)

But the shop stewards' practices were deeply influenced by the
broader political struggle. Union activists consciously rejected the
tendencies towards institutionalisation which are inscribed in union
recognition and negotiation:

'... the negotiations were not strictly speaking negotiations.
Although it was unavoidable to articulate our demands, and put them
before management for discussion, our approach was one of confrontation
... We would put forward demands and strike the following day. We were
reluctant to use the Industrial Council or the procedures of the Labour
Relations Act. We strike whether it's legal or illegal ... We were
not only challenging the individual employers, we were even challenging
the state'. (Von Holdt 2003:121)

The symbolic charge of challenging white control of the shop floor
was potent. Sometimes white managers who tried to perform the tasks of
striking blacks in dangerous areas of the works were injured. According
to one shop steward:

'Then people are laughing, saying it's nice to see these
white guys being involved in accidents. We have been slaves for such a
long time, we want to see what happens when we strike ...'

This experience of collective power was more important than the
instrumental ends of collective bargaining:

'Even if we are not paid for three days we don't care,
now the whites can see what is going on, so they won't be able to
come and talk the way they like'. (Von Holdt 2003:123)

The union was subject to contradictory tensions between the
pressure to negotiate workplace order and procedures with management,
and the pressure of radical militancy that rejected a workplace order
which, like apartheid more generally, was structured by racial
domination. This tension was deeply embedded in the internal structure
of the union, and took the form of eventually violent conflict between
the shop stewards, who were involved in negotiating and making daily use
of workplace procedures, and the more militant strike committee. But
even the shop stewards, involved in procedure and negotiation as they
were, did everything they could to avoid recognising the legitimacy of
white management. On one occasion they engaged in a lengthy battle with
management over re-drafting the disciplinary procedure, and when
management had finally conceded to their demands, they refused to sign,
on the grounds that they did not recognise the right of management to
punish workers and that they would refuse to be bound by the
disciplinary procedures (Von Holdt 2003:142).

Integral to the intensity of workplace struggles was a degree of
coercion in maintaining the solidarity of union members. The shop
stewards established a 'strike committee' who would 'be
our police' (Von Holdt 2003:129) for the purpose of enforcing
discipline and punishing nonstrikers, and to begin with this appears to
have had widespread legitimacy among the membership. The strike
committee became known as the 'sjambok committee', and its
purpose was to enforce the 'union law'. As strike action
escalated in the workplace coercion intensified and dozens of workers
were assaulted, sometimes severely. Members of the strike committee saw
themselves as agents of order--'police'--and violence was an
intensely ordering activity. However, an increasing number of workers,
led by the shop stewards, objected to this violence and the fact that
strike action was no longer discussed by the entire membership, but
mandated by the strike committee, and eventually the union split.

This case study demonstrates how remote the prospect of
institutionalising industrial relations under apartheid really was. Both
managers and shop stewards had deeply ambiguous attitudes to the
procedures through which worker and trade union rights were
operationalised on the shop floor, although shop stewards in particular
became master tacticians at making use of these procedures to build
their organisational power and protect their members. Underlying the
formal codes of procedures and agreements was a hostile struggle for
power and control deeply shaped by racial and political dynamics.
Informal rationales and an informal structure, the strike committee,
were important factors in the disruption of agreements and procedures.
Recognition of legal rights and workplace procedures implied recognition
of management--and in the eyes of many worker activists management was
an agent of the profoundly illegitimate apartheid regime.

The study demonstrates that the political factor, in the form of
the national liberation struggle, was more significant in undermining
processes of institutionalisation than the earlier studies acknowledged,
because of the way it framed and gave meaning to union organisation in
the workplace. And for a union organisation engaged in this kind of
struggle, coercion and the violent imposition of collective discipline
were legitimated by the notion of a war against apartheid--albeit that
the extent and occasion of violence was subject to contention, a
contention that became so sharp in the case of Highveld Steel that the
union split in two, with leading shop stewards arguing that violence had
no place in a trade union and simply subverted democracy.

Strike violence in the transition: the case of the public service

This section of the article and the next compares the strike
violence that took place during two public service strikes which took
place 15 years apart. The comparison is limited to the dynamics of the
strike in the public hospitals, although in the later strike the
withdrawal of labour took place more widely across the public service,
and particularly in the schools. The first, which took place in 1992 in
the middle of political negotiations over the constitutional future of
South Africa, was marked by the absence of any institutional rights or
procedures for public service workers. The rights won by industrial
workers, and established in the Labour Relations Act of 1981 had never
been extended to the public service. The apartheid state refused to
recognize the unions which attempted to organise black public service
workers in the last years of the apartheid regime. Black general
workers, such as cleaners, porters, ward assistants and kitchen staff
worked under particularly oppressive conditions: permanently classified
as casual workers, they could be dismissed instantly, were not eligible
for pension benefits, and women workers, when pregnant, had to resign
their jobs.

The strike took place at a time when waves of violence were rolling
over South Africa, with the region around Johannesburg one of its
epicentres. From 1990--from, that is, the moment of the unbanning of the
liberation movements and the release of political prisoners--a series of
massacres were perpetrated by a 'third force' in townships and
on commuter trains, which was clearly intent on undermining and
weakening the ANC, and perhaps destabilising the national negotiations
over the outlines of a new democratic order. The negotiations themselves
were tense, and marked by a series of stand-offs between the ANC and the
National Party government. Much evidence points towards the 'third
force' being linked to Inkatha, the Zulu ethnic nationalist
organisation which was based in KwaZulu Natal and the migrant worker
hostels of the Witwatersrand, and which had long been embroiled in
violent conflict with the popular movement and the ANC, and being
sponsored from within the apartheid state, whether with the tacit
support of its national leadership or by rogue security force elements
is not clear. For the National Party and the 'third force' the
prospect of ANC-aligned unions strongly organised within the state was
likely to have been an alarming one.

The National Education Health and Allied Workers Union (NEHAWU) was
launched in 1989 through the merger of several different organisational
initiatives over the previous few years. It was only able to win
recognition through a wave of strikes that gained an added impetus from
the unbanning of the ANC in 1990. The most important of these strikes
nationally, and the one which finally won them recognition, took place
in 1992, and started at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital It spread to 32
other hospitals in the old Transvaal province after the Chris Hani
Baragwanath shop stewards were arrested early in the strike, and from
there to public service workplaces in the rest of the country.

Workers who were in the leadership of the union at the time
described the strike as a 'do or die' moment. Amongst
themselves they discussed the fact that previous strikes had failed to
achieve anything, and that at this time they would strike for as long as
it took: Sibindi uyabulala, sibindi uyaphilisa ('Courage can make
you do brave things; it can also make you do stupid things') , as
one put it. The strike started at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital with a
series of demonstrations culminating in a mass meeting at the recreation
hall where workers decided to strike. The hall was surrounded, some say
by the army, others say the police, tear gas was fired into it, and the
shop stewards were arrested.

The strike was an extremely bitter and protracted one, lasting for
almost four months. In the Transvaal six shop stewards and the husband
of another shop steward were shot and killed by unknown assassins during
the strike and in its aftermath, and at least six strike breakers were
also killed (Fenichel 1992, NEHAWU nd). Quite early in the strike
government employed strike breakers from the migrant worker hostels in
the Witwatersrand to take the place of the strikers. The strike breakers
were Zulu-speakers from KwaZulu Natal, and shop stewards believed they
were part of the 'third force'. It was these strike breakers,
they believed, who were assassinating shop stewards.

A clandestine committee was formed by workers from different
hospitals to develop informal strategies to strengthen the strike across
Gauteng. (2) Information was gathered about strike breakers, and strike
breakers from a particular hospital would be attacked by workers from a
different hospital, so that they could not be recognised. Petrol bombs
and guns were used in some attacks:

Informants provided an example:

Workers in general seemed supportive of the strategy:

Non-strikers were also assaulted at taxi ranks and shebeens, and it
seems likely that not all violence was coordinated through the
clandestine committee. The majority of strikers were support workers,
and there was considerable intimidation and assault of nurses. Asked
where the ideas about using violence had come from, a woman worker
explained:

Just as in the case of Highveld Steel, for these workers the trade
union struggle was closely identified with the political struggle for
national liberation, and the quasi-insurrectionary strategies developed
within the ANC and the popular movement provided a reference point for
the use of targeted violence against state property and agents as well
as 'sellouts'. This violence was necessary in order to make
the negotiating breakthrough that had eluded them in previous strikes:

The strike was successful. The union was recognised, and general
workers won their demand for employment rights. This victory opened the
way for inclusion of the public service in the new post-apartheid Labour
Relations Act of 1996. Some 150 of the strikers accused of intimidation
remained suspended from work until the conclusion of the disciplinary
process. The strikers let it be known that anyone who gave evidence
against them would be targeted:

Strike violence was not, however, only instrumental in the struggle
to win negotiations. As in the Highveld Steel case study, to workers who
worked under oppressive conditions and who had struggled for several
years to win recognition, the strike and the violence associated with it
provided a heightened sense of agency and power, and of connection to
the broader political drama playing itself out around them during the
transition. It was clear that the interviews evoked strong memories of
an intense and dangerous time when they took their lives in their hands.
In group discussions participants voices were at times loud and excited,
and laughter marked the experiences as shared ones:

In these moments workers were recalling practices that bore no
resemblance to the routines of institutionalised conflict resolution.
However, in quieter moments some individual interviewees remembered the
violence as having been deeply painful.

The 1992 strike provides an extreme case of the dynamics already
identified in the wildcat strikes of Highveld Steel under apartheid.
During the numerous strikes at the latter no workers were killed in
strike violence, although many were severely beaten and at least one
shop steward's house was petrol bombed. In contrast, over the
four-month hospitals strike some 13 shop stewards, family members and
strike breakers were killed across the Transvaal. The difference can be
explained by the fact that, on the one hand, there were no
organisational or institutional rights or procedures through which the
conflict could be mediated, and on the other, the strike took place at a
time of heightened political contestation and uncertainty regarding the
outcome of negotiations, and was accompanied by extremely high levels of
violence in the communities around the hospitals.

There are similarities, though. In both cases informal
workers' committees were established with a mandate to make use of
violence to strengthen the strike, in contrast to the role of the shop
stewards committee, which was to lead the strike at a formal
organisational and public level, and engage in negotiations with the
employer. In both cases strike violence was infused with the practices
and meanings attached to the broader political struggle for liberation.
The repertoires of collective violence were by now deeply embedded in
the social structure of the trade unions. The birth of NEHAWU was a
particularly violent one, deeply marked as such in the memory of the
union and its members.

Strike violence and the post-apartheid order

By the time of the 2007 public service strike, the full range of
employee and trade union rights enshrined in national labour legislation
applied to public service workers. Trade unions had the right to access
members, represent them, organise, strike legally without dismissal and
picket. Collective bargaining was institutionalised across the public
service. Public service unions had overtaken many industrial unions in
size, and NEHAWU was the biggest affiliate of COSATU. The negotiated
transition had produced a constitutional democracy and the former
liberation movement, the ANC, with which COSATU had a structured
alliance, governed with a large majority. In other words, all the
necessary conditions for the 'institutionalisation of the working
class' appeared to be in place.

Nonetheless, like a growing number of strikes through the
mid-2000s, the public service strike was accompanied by considerable
violent intimidation. This section of the article provides a brief
overview of the strike, based mostly on participant observation at Chris
Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, before exploring in some detail the
views of worker activists regarding the strike violence. (3)

An alliance of public service unions launched the strike in
mid-2007 in support of demands for a substantial real wage increase. The
strike turned into a protracted test of strength and will between
government and the unions, and lasted four weeks. At the level of
industrial relations the right to strike became a matter of dispute in
the public health sector, with government arguing that it was defined as
an essential service in labour legislation and obtaining a court
interdict against striking in the hospitals, which enabled the
government to declare the strike in these workplaces illegal. The unions
argued that this was an underhand tactic, as the legislation did not
envisage all health sector workers being defined as essential service
workers, but obliged the employer to meet with the unions in order to
negotiate the scope of 'essential services' in the health
sector. This had not been done. This dispute over the quite fundamental
issue of the legality of the strike, at least in the hospital sector,
qualifies the extent to which industrial relations procedures can be
regarded as fully institutionalised, as will become evident below.

Politically, too, the strike was charged with considerable tension.
Firstly, the ANC government under Thabo Mbeki had adopted a tough
position on the public service unions, generally negotiating
aggressively as well as imposing a programme of downsizing in the mid-
to late-1990s. A bruising encounter for the unions had been their defeat
in the 1999 strike, which was undermined by disunity and fizzled out,
allowing the government to impose a unilateral wage increase. Secondly,
a tacit political aim was to demonstrate labour's strength in the
context of a leadership battle in the ANC, in which COSATU was allied
with a range of forces committed to replacing President Thabo Mbeki with
Jacob Zuma. For labour the stakes in the 2007 strike were therefore
high, both in terms of the imperative of reasserting itself in the
public service and in terms of the struggle against a
'neoliberal' leadership of the ANC.

The strike started on June 1, a Friday, with strong support,
particularly in the public health and education sectors. On that day the
heads of all hospitals were instructed to hand the unions a copy of the
court interdict prohibiting essential service workers from striking. On
the Sunday, government announced that any essential service workers
still on strike by 10am on Monday would be dismissed. On Monday morning
the Army medical corps was drafted into hospitals to run the kitchens
and provide cleaning services. At Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, as
the 10 am deadline approached, groups of strikers toyi-toyied between
the wards, pulling out any nurses or support workers who were still
working. On the Wednesday government announced that picket lines would
be removed from hospitals and other institutions, on Thursday the COSATU
general secretary addressed a rally of strikers at Chris Hani
Baragwanath--always seen as one of the key strategic workplaces in the
health sector--and called on workers across the country to shut
government down, and on the Friday the police moved the picket line out
of the hospital. Thus the first week of the strike was characterised by
each side ratcheting up the pressure on the other. While government made
use of legislative provisions and the court interdict to declare the
strike illegal, the unions took a decision to ignore the interdict and
rely on collective action to support their demands. Both parties
continued to mobilise their resources over the following week.

On the second Monday, the 11th day of the strike, dismissal notices
were posted in every hospital, listing between 30 and 40 strikers from
that hospital who were declared to have been dismissed in light of the
illegality of the strike. Every day a further 30 to 40 strikers per
hospital were listed as dismissed. On the Wednesday, COSATU mobilised a
national general one-day strike in support of the public service unions,
an unprecedented display of solidarity for striking affiliates from the
Federation as a whole. This was the high point of the strike. Over the
following days the number of strikers gradually diminished in the public
health sector and government administrative offices, but it remained
extremely solid in the schools. The strike was sufficiently strong for
the unions to hold out and force government back to the bargaining table
with new offers. Eventually the strike was settled after four weeks,
with government having revised its wage offer from 5.3 per cent to 7.5
per cent, and agreement to increase salaries by a further 1 per cent
above inflation in 2008. There were also substantial increases in
housing and medical aid benefits, and agreement to fast track the
'occupational specific dispensation' (meaning increased
salaries) for underpaid and scarce-skill categories such as doctors,
nurses and teachers. Although the increase was significantly below the
10 per cent demanded by the unions, they claimed the result as a victory
for public service unions. (4)

Intimidation started even before the strike had begun. Two days
before the strike groups of men appeared in both the adult and the
paediatric ICU in the Burns Unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, and
forced the nurses on duty to accompany them to a meeting. Fortunately,
two nurses were able to conceal themselves and remain behind, so
averting a potentially hazardous crisis. The men were unknown, and there
was speculation that they were from other hospitals or schools. By the
middle of the first week of the strike there were increasing reports of
intimidation of non-strikers, particularly nurses. On the Friday after
COSATU's call for government to be shut down nurses in the surgical
wards panicked and fled the hospital after a barrage of SMSs and phone
calls to the wards threatened that their homes and children were known.
Doctors and matrons spent the rest of the day preparing patients for
removal to private hospitals, and by the end of the night most of the
wards had been closed. By the Monday when the first dismissal notices
were posted, strike violence was extensive in hospitals and in schools,
as well as in communities where non-strikers lived, mostly in the form
of verbal threats and assaults.

It is important here to draw attention to the specific character of
the labour force and unionisation in the hospitals. The labour process
combines a high labour intensity of high-level professional skills with
a diversity of less skilled non-professional support workers. Thus at
Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital there were at the time of the strike
almost 2,000 nurses and several hundred doctors, and perhaps 2,000
support workers, including those directly involved in the clinical
process, such as clerks, cleaners and porters, as well as indirect
support in the form of kitchen workers, laundry workers, drivers and,
again, clerical workers. NEHAWU is most strongly organised amongst
support workers, and to some extent among nursing assistants. Nurses are
organised by DENOSA, a COSATU affiliate, and by non-COSATU union,
HOSPERSA, which also organises clerical staff. While NEHAWU is the
majority trade union, its base is among the militant and relatively
unskilled support workers, not the professional workers who are central
to the clinical labour process. The professional ethos of nurses means
they are reluctant to strike even when strongly aggrieved, and strikes
in the public health sector are generally led by NEHAWU and
characterised by often bitter divisions between workers and unions. This
also works against institutionalisation of industrial relations, since,
while DENOSA and HOSPERSA prefer to make use of institutional channels
and procedures to assert their professional concerns, NEHAWU and its
members tend to make use of collective action to overcome a sense of
marginalisation. Intimidation of non-strikers may be seen as the only
way to disrupt the core labour process of the workplace.

The 2007 strike was remarkable in that it was a joint initiative of
most unions in the public service, both COSATU and non-COSATU. This held
out the possibility that intimidation might be greatly reduced. However,
a few days into the strike the support of DENOSA and HOSPERSA became
increasingly lukewarm and, in practice, ceased supporting the strike.
Once again, NEHAWU and the support workers were on their own.

In interviews some shop stewards and worker activists referred
specifically to their sense that the employer had flouted legal and
institutional procedures by declaring the strike illegal and dismissing
workers:

But most of them focused on the fact that violence is intrinsic to
strike action, drawing on their own experience and:

Workers, then, are disposed to use violence in strikes because it
is intrinsic to the meaning of the strike and because it has proven its
effectiveness. Violence is a necessary element in maintaining the
solidarity of the union and strengthening negotiations. A strike is a
power struggle and has its own morality, which is not affected by the
fact that South Africa is now a democracy with the former liberation
movement in government. In the words of a woman worker:

The use of violence explicitly breaks the law, but is justified by
a different law, the law of the majority in the union; where they clash
it is difficult to remain 'upright':

The authority of the law and the state has its limits when
confronted by the imperatives of strike action. According to a woman
worker:

What emerges from these interviews is that the collective action of
a strike carves out a domain with its own laws and rationales, and its
own codes of conduct, beyond the authority of the law or the moral codes
that govern 'normal' individual interactions in society. These
rationales and codes work against tendencies towards institutionalising
industrial conflict. Several of the interviewees referred to broader
social and economic injustices to explain their readiness to see the law
and the authority of the state put aside; in the words of a woman
worker:

There will be no peace until the revolution has been completed:

The position of workers in society is cause for anger, especially
when compared to their aspirations and the promises made to them during
the liberation struggle:

Democracy in itself is inadequate because it does not improve the
lives of workers:

Thus broader socio-economic conditions and the continuing social
injustice that workers have to bear frame the specific rationales and
codes of the strike and of union organisation, providing a broader
justification for strike violence.

Part of the explanation for the durability of strike violence and
the continuing transgression of the laws and procedures through which
conflict is institutionalised, lies at the subjective level, with the
sense of empowerment and agency that workers who occupy dreary
repetitive jobs experience when participating in collective action. This
was evident both in the Highveld Steel case study and in the 1992 public
service strike. Again, in 2007, a woman worker describes the sense of
liberation and agency through taking part in strike violence:

Again, this feeling is associated with the special morality of the
strike: when workers meet a strikebreaker with bags of groceries, even
though they do not have food at home 'we just throw it into the
streets for cars to smash it, we kick it, we will take nothing'.

This special morality of the strike is conveyed by one of the
stories a shop steward told about the strike. A nursing assistant
dressed up in bulky clothes and used ash to alter her complexion, and
participated in the sjambokking of nurses at the taxi rank. The
following day, seeing the nurses she had beaten toyi-toying and singing
on the picket line, her comment was: 'See my patients over
there--see my medicine has cured them!' In this inversion of the
normal meanings of patient and medicine, non-striking nurses are
regarded as ill, and beating with a sjambok is a medicine which cures
them and brings them out on strike.

Collective action and violence is associated also with the visceral
sense of oppression and marginalisation which the least skilled workers
experience, particularly in a skill-intensive institution such as a
hospital:

It is not that striking in the health services does not pose moral
dilemmas. Indeed, it does.

This puts nurses, specifically, in a difficult position:

In the moral tension between the claims of patients and the duty
nurses feel to them, and the moral imperatives of worker solidarity,
solidarity comes first. However, as with the 1992 strike, an individual
reflecting on her role in strike violence may feel a strong sense of
guilt about actions that are unavoidable to those who have to act in the
real world, on 'earth':

The local moral order constituted by collective action in the form
of the strike, and by the union as the agency through which the strike
is organised, should not be regarded as a coherent and all-encompassing
counter-order of the same kind as the counter-order constructed by
workers and community activists during the struggle against apartheid in
the 1980s. Firstly, the 2007 strike remained limited to economic trade
union demands, and never posed larger questions about the nature of the
socioeconomic order. Secondly, the sense of the unfairness of the
emerging post-apartheid socioeconomic order remains relatively inchoate,
in contrast to the clear demands for democracy and the end of apartheid
in the 1980s.

Thirdly, while a core of activists among the workers clearly
regarded intimidation and strike violence as a legitimate practice, it
is not clear how widely this view is shared. As we saw in the Highveld
Steel case study, even at the height of the struggle against apartheid,
for many workers there were limits to the amount of violence they found
acceptable and were prepared to support, and the union split on this
issue at the factory in the late 1980s. It is certainly true that in
2007 the majority of nurses rejected the idea that collective solidarity
took precedence over their professional ethos of patient care, even
while they supported the goals of the strike. Nonetheless, these
practices had sufficient support for the union to retain its support and
even increase its membership in the course of the strike.

Finally, it is important to avoid imputing to interviewees the kind
of systematic worldview that sociologists attempt to construct through
the process of theorising about social phenomena. The local moral order
that cohered may be a quite transient construction, one that emerges
during episodes of collective action and then becomes dormant again,
rather than an ongoing stance in relation to state authority and moral
codes. While the counter-order constructed in the struggle against
apartheid may have shared some of this flexibility in its significance
for the daily living of many individuals, it nonetheless seems to have
been a much more durable and encompassing order, posing a real
alternative to the apartheid order imposed by the state.

Concluding discussion

The interviews with workers who took part in the 2007 strike lay
bare a number of factors that mesh together to propel unprocedural
action and strike violence. Some of these factors belong to the
industrial relations field, while others arise from the broader
political and socioeconomic order beyond the industrial relations field,
and some straddle the two. Located in the field of industrial relations
are the disputed nature of some of the procedures themselves, the
relatively weak bargaining position of the support workers and their
union, and the historical repertoire of practices that are experienced
as intrinsic to striking. Located in the broader socioeconomic order are
continuing social and economic injustice, bolstered by the sense that
the liberation struggle has not achieved its full ends, and the limited
reach of the authority of the law and the state. Straddling the two are
the sense of an alternative local moral order which coheres around the
collective decision of the majority, and the subjective experience of
agency and empowerment fostered by going on strike, transgressing laws
and procedures, and deploying violence against non-strikers.

It is clear from this that industrial conflict is only partially
institutionalised in post-apartheid South Africa. On the one hand, trade
unions and employers make regular, indeed daily, use of the institutions
and procedures for resolving conflict between individual employees and
employers, as well as for collective dispute resolution and
collective-bargaining. On the other hand, procedures may be disputed or
regarded as unfair, and collective action not infrequently involves
violence and intimidation, including violence by the police. Explaining
the partial quality of institutionalisation needs to take account both
of the industrial relations factors as well as the factors located in
the broader society.

In the field of industrial relations

Despite the fact that post-apartheid labour legislation was shaped
by extensive consultation and at times tough negotiations between
labour, business and government, the fairness and meaning of some of its
provisions remains contested between unions and employers. This was
clearly evident in the dispute over essential services and the legality
of the strike in the hospitals in the public service strike. Declaring
the strike illegal fuelled trade unionists' determination to use
illegal methods themselves, firstly by ignoring the interdict, and
secondly by stepping up intimidation.

More important, however, is the fact that many sectors of the
labour force are denied an effective voice even though they have formal
access to substantial trade union rights. To some extent this was the
case in the public service strike. Semi-skilled and unskilled support
staff have full access to trade union rights and have seen their basic
wages increased substantially in the years of democracy; nonetheless,
they do not form a majority of hospital staff and feel marginalised in
an institution that values the ethos and voice of professionals
relatively highly, and even though they form a majority of the unionised
workforce, their impact on the clinical labour process is relatively
marginal. Striking, and using violent and disruptive strike tactics, is
one way of making their power felt, as the 'illiterate' worker
quoted above makes clear, and of course the subjective sense of agency
becomes even more important in these circumstances.

Marginalisation and disempowerment are experienced by workers in
many sectors of the economy. Indeed the employers' strategy of
casualising and outsourcing workers is explicitly designed to undermine
union power and reduce workers' access to labour legislation; this
effectively denies large sections of the workforce substantial access to
employee and trade union rights, despite the existence of these rights
at a formal level (von Holdt and Webster 2005). In these circumstances,
industrial relations cannot be institutionalised. One would expect
workers in this position more readily to resort to violence in order to
enhance their weakened bargaining position, and indeed much of the
violence in the past few years has taken place when relatively
vulnerable workers have engaged in strike action--such as in the
security guards' strike of 2006, which was the most violent strike
in the post-apartheid period, in which 57 people died (Ehrenreich 2007,
Jansen 2006, Makgetla 2006), and in the construction sector strike in
2009. The growing tendency for heavy-handed and violent policing of
strikes--which was particularly obvious during the security guards
strike--is a factor which straddles the industrial relations field and
broader political and social factors. In the field of industrial
relations, it suggests an underlying failure on the part of the state to
accept the institutionalisation of industrial relations enshrined in
legislation, since police action frequently violates the rights to
gather, picket and march.

There is, in other words, a persistent ambivalence towards
institutionalising industrial relations procedures on the part of
unions, employers and the state. At the COSATU 10th congress, held in
2009, the secretariat report criticised the use of violence and the
trashing of streets in strikes, arguing that this delegitimised the
strike weapon in the eyes of the public. Many of the affiliate leaders
were clearly uncomfortable with this view, and argued that provocative
and brutal police action and the use of scab labour to undermine strikes
drove workers to use such tactics. These rationales illustrate that
industrial relations procedures and the industrial relations order
(employment of scabs, the actions of the police) remain matters of deep
contention.

The institutionalisation of industrial relations implies an
acceptance of the underlying industrial order and the balance of power
between workers and employers. The ambivalence of all parties to
industrial relations institutions expresses an underlying contestation
over the industrial order and the relative position of workers and
employers in it.

Beyond the field of industrial relations

But strike violence also takes place where workers occupy a
relatively powerful position in the labour market and are not subject to
the kind of de facto exclusion or marginalisation described above.
During the public service strike in 2007 there were persistently high
levels of intimidation and violence in schools, often directed against
school principals, despite the fact that the strike was extremely strong
and that teachers can in no way be described as vulnerable or insecure
workers, but have a similar professional status to nurses. Municipal
workers in their national strike in 2009 engaged in widespread
disruption and trashing of towns and cities, despite occupying a
relatively strong labour market position with full access to the rights
enshrined in labour legislation (in this case police
'provocation' in initiating violence was cited by trade union
leaders). In order to understand violence in these conditions, one
cannot rely on explanations that referred only to problems within
industrial relations itself, but has to explore the factors beyond this
field.

Here the prevailing sense among organised workers, reflected in the
interviews, that the current social order is unjust, a view which is
fuelled by the legacy of radical rhetoric that was current during the
anti-apartheid struggle, has to be the pre-eminent factor. The struggles
COSATU has engaged in to neutralise the 'neoliberal'
leadership of the ANC and shift its policies towards the left, and its
calls for a more socialist orientation, reflect the same sense that the
legacy of apartheid continues to blight workers' lives. This stance
implies a lukewarm and conditional acceptance of institutions that may
be held to buttress an unfair social order, including the institutions
and procedures that define the industrial relations field. The outlines
of the post-apartheid social order are, therefore, provisional and
contentious.

Such attitudes are shared quite broadly in the trade union
movement. It is not only COSATU and organised workers that engage in
this kind of contention; virtually every matter of public policy, public
morality and public interest--urban policy, land policy, public
transport initiatives, policing, housing policy, the meaning of
HIV/Aids--all are contentious, all are matters of dispute, and involve
interest groups in heated argument, conflict and, sometimes, violence.
The relative power of different interests, hierarchies, authority,
winners and losers, are subject to contestation, negotiation, definition
and redefinition. The nature of South Africa's society and the
post-apartheid social order are not settled matters.

Partly arising from this, and partly exacerbating it, is the
limited reach and authority of the state. As Tilly points out, the scope
for contentious politics and collective violence is expanded in
societies characterised by low-capacity states. Where the state has
limited powers to enforce the rules of the game and punish
transgressors, non-state actors are able to push back the limits of
contention and transgress laws and deploy violence with impunity (Tilly
2003:41ff). This description can be applied quite convincingly to South
Africa. In the public service strike the unions and their members
flouted the court interdict against illegal striking with impunity, and
no workers have been charged with intimidation or violence. Nor has
anyone been charged with any of the murders arising out of the security
guards strike. There is, in other words, very little cost attached to
subverting the institutionalisation of conflict. The violence of the
police in response to legal and peaceful strikes--as well as to other
conflicts, such as service delivery protests in communities--is an
aspect of the same problem: where order and the authority of the state
are continually placed in question, the police themselves tend to behave
in an unpredictable and even arbitrary fashion. Uncertain of their
authority, they too can transgress the law and the bounds of legitimacy,
frequently with the same impunity as their adversaries.

These factors beyond the field of industrial relations heighten the
salience of the factors that straddle industrial relations and the wider
social order, and serve in some ways to connect the wider disorder to
industrial disorder: limited state authority can be eroded or supplanted
by local moral orders which legitimate alternative authorities, in this
case, the authority of the collective decision made by union membership
which is buttressed by the sense that the prevailing order is unjust and
unsettled. Likewise, the subjective potency of the experience of agency
fostered by industrial action or collective violence is enhanced by the
sense that it is part of a wider contestation. It is also the wider
reality of contestation and instability that heightens contestation
within the industrial relations arena, not only over the ends prescribed
by the industrial relations system, but over the very legitimacy and
acceptability of elements of the system itself.

As was the case in the apartheid era and the transition, the
broader dynamics of South African society have a profound impact on
trade unions and industrial relations. Although there is a greater
degree of institutionalisation than before, it is only partial, and it
is likely to remain in this state for as long as the broader social
order remains unsettled and contested. The institutionalisation of a
specific field like industrial relations depends on an acceptance by all
parties of the broader socio-economic order and the balance of power it
stabilises in society--what is suggested by the idea of
'constitutionalisation'. The 'constitutionalisation of
the working class'--as well as the broader constitutionalisation of
society--proves to be a more contradictory and precarious process than
imagined.

(1.) A rough draft of this paper was presented at the International
Sociological Association (ISA) 1st Forum of Sociology, Barcelona Spain,
5-8 September, 2008, and at the Comprehending Class Conference,
University of Johannesburg, organised by the Centre for Sociological
Research, University of Johannesburg, and the History Workshop,
University of the Witwatersrand, 23-26 June, 2009. I would like to thank
participants at both conferences, as well as colleagues at SWOP and Wits
University, for comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank
Jacob Dlamini for assistance in translating Xhosa/Zulu proverbs.

(2.) The information presented here is culled from interviews and
discussions with numerous workers and shop stewards across Gauteng. The
author was unable to interview anyone who had participated personally in
the committee.

(3.) At the time the author was an adviser to the Surgical Division
Transformation Project at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. As with the
1992 strike, the views of workers were solicited through interviews
across Gauteng. (See also Hassen 2007a and 2007b, Pardesi 2007, Von
Holdt 2007).

(4.) This article does not claim to assess the effectiveness of the
public service strike as industrial action, but rather to investigate
the strike violence which accompanied it.

They used to go and destroy. The army was surrounding the hospitals
so they couldn't get access. They went to their homes. Homes were
destroyed and people have been killed. Many people died. There was
a third force, and some of our shop stewards died. They were
assassinated. Shop stewards and known activists didn't sleep in
their homes, there were strange cars parked outside watching.

The spirit of workers becomes cruel even if they are wearing
Christian clothes. One of the matrons said on TV that the strike
can continue, the hospital was okay, they didn't need the strikers.
Within an hour her house was bombed, even though the police were
watching. We told her she must resign, and she did.

You just feel good when the enemy is shaking, you hear the news and
you say good. You don't ask who did it. Workers were targeting a
monster at the time, so afterwards they would just say mission
accomplished. Otherwise we would still be in darkness.

I was involved in politics, I was involved in the community, I was
a member of the UDF (United Democratic Front). I started working at
the hospital, I was involved in the strike in 1985. I was part of
that school of thought where we had strategies for fighting
government, we had all the ideas of how to use force if necessary,
we were taught those things, that we could never submit. Meetings
took place under duress [from the police], so we knew how to fight.
I nearly went to Robben Island.

You know what is frustrating? You are on strike. Others are
comfortable, they are eating. But they will also benefit even
though they are afraid. We called ourselves the hard-hearted.
All tactics were to make the negotiators achieve--we didn't do it
for fun, but for frustration.
Few people would not achieve, we needed many--therefore force was
required. It was necessary in order to achieve what we have
achieved.

It worked, the story spread in the hospital, and people saw if you
give evidence you will die, they will burn your home and hurt your
children. It was successful, because there was no evidence.

When we strike we kicked everything, like patients' food, we
destroyed everything. They called the army in to run the kitchen
etc. We called it 'days of chaos'. But strikes are enjoyable. It's
enjoyable, it is bad, it's exciting. I remember escaping in the
boot of a car, after I found myself next to a meeting where I heard
they were planning the assassination of Oupa, one of our leaders. I
told him but he did nothing and indeed he was assassinated. It was
painful but exciting.

All proper procedures were followed, but they declared the strike
illegal, stopped our salaries, served us with dismissal letters.
That is where everything broke out of proportion. We decided we
were going to smash everything.
The LRA and the Constitution seem not to bind the employers--they
can do anything, they don't follow procedure, but the unions are
expected to follow procedures.
They are above the law, the seniors in government break the law.

Since I was born, I have seen all strikes are violent. There are no
such strikes as peaceful strikes. Some workers do not join a strike
because of fear. We must develop a mechanism for all these workers
to participate. By force they must join the strike. Otherwise
anybody would do their own thing.
You know you are holding a peaceful strike, but practically you do
not do it peacefully. You defend what is yours. My job is my job,
it belongs to no one. I know what I am fighting for. If you don't
use force, problems won't be resolved speedily. This puts pressure
to the management or government to act.
Violence sends a message to the whole country, those responsible
will quickly realise they must resolve things. So the violence
assists to wake up the entire country, that the innocent will
suffer.

There's no sweet strike, there is no Christian strike.... a strike
is a strike. You want to get back what belongs to you. You want the
response must be positive and quick. You won't win a strike with a
Bible. You do not wear high heels and carry an umbrella and say
1992 it was under apartheid, 2007 is under ANC. You won't win a
strike like that. You need to wear takkies and jeans.

I do not think the law is wrong as such. Law is supposed to defend
the right to strike and the rights of those not on strike. But how
can we follow that law? Thina, how are we going to be successful in
winning our demands? We can't always be upright. Umthetho
oyaphulwa, oyenzelwe oko phulwa ('Laws were made to be broken'). We
must follow the majority. The majority vote for a strike. We must
find ways to make those others join the strike and the decision of
the majority. You are working, we are on strike. You must be afraid
for your safety.

Everybody has rights. You have rights, I have rights. That's why
when workers do it they hide it. They know they are not supposed to
do that ... A sjambok is during the night, but during the day they
sing. Everyone has the right to be covered [by the law]. That's why
they assault at night, not daylight. Yes, they know it's illegal to
assault. They are breaking the law. Yes, when it comes to a fight
they don't care.

When you're in a strike you are in a war. Even if the ANC is the
government, it is not yet uhuru. Workers issues and demands have
not yet been met, although we are compromising.

We know according to law it is an injustice to sjambok or assault
somebody. You cannot say because of anger, an individual must
assault somebody. I do not say that law must be amended, because we
will be living in a lawless country. But we know that during a
strike there will be lots of casualties. Since our revolution,
until we try to live according to its true nature, there won't be
peace.

Workers are still poor, most workers are still not educated, most
workers are still suffering Transparency is not practised.
Agreements are reached but they are not implemented. There's lots
of corruption in the health department, money is misallocated. This
brings frustration, when salaries come workers have hope, but when
workers do not get what they want they get frustrated and violent.
Service delivery is not properly made, even in local authorities.

The struggle continues. We have democracy, but the struggle is an
economic one--you need to maintain your family. It is a democratic
country, but you cannot sit back and just drink water.

During the strike it's an exciting life, after the action we will
be laughing--'did you see how she jumped?' We will be excited that
we made the rat busy. In the past we used to call it Ratex, now we
call it Hale Phirimi (different makes of rat poison), after eating
that it won't return. It's nice to deal with a rat. It's exciting
to deal with a rat. We go on strike voluntarily because we know
what we want. We know why we are on strike. To be in a strike is to
be a leader, you are not a leader because you benefit. In fact
being a leader you lose a lot.

When you fight with an illiterate, you must be ready to fight. I
might start thinking you take advantage, or you do not respect me
because I am not educated. Even our members have an inferior
complex, when others start speaking English we start thinking laba
abafundile baqalile. ('the educated ones are starting again'). We
use all our force, we pull all the masses. You will never defeat
us.

It's very painful, because you see patients suffer. But you can't
serve your patient while ... they must serve my interests first, so
that I can serve my patient.

It's difficult to be a nurse during a strike. We take them as
amagundwana ('rats', that is, strikebreakers). But deep down we
know they are not amagundwana. We understand they have to be there
to take care of patients, but there is a strike. If they are not
there patients will die. We feel pity for them, but there's nothing
we can do.

You pray. God, please forgive me, I know I have sinned, but this is
earth. You console yourself that you destroyed property, you did
not kill. Please help me in resolving this strike. I remember in
1992 we held prayers, we went to the mountains and held a night
vigil. We prayed. But you motivate your prayer that at least I did
not kill somebody. Even my kids are sleeping with an empty stomach,
their children are sleeping with a full stomach. When you are many
you feel better and enjoy [the strike], but when you are alone you
think about the situation.